In the meantime, however, there had been growing up a far more

spontaneous religious movement than the official Reformation which has

just been described. Many thousands of persons had become deeply

interested in religion and enthusiastic in their faith, and had come

to hold different views on church government, doctrines, and practices

from those approved of either by the Roman Catholic church or by the

government of England. Those who held such views were known as

Puritans, and throughout the reign of Elizabeth were increasing in

numbers and making strenuous though unsuccessful efforts to introduce

changes in the established church.

The reign of Elizabeth was marked not only by the continuance of royal

despotism, by brilliant literary production, and by the struggle of

the established church against the Catholics on the one side and the

Puritans on the other, but by difficult and dangerous foreign

relations.

More than once invasion by the continental powers was imminent.

Elizabeth was threatened with deposition by the English adherents of

Mary, Queen of Scots, supported by France and Spain. The English

government pursued a policy of interference in the internal conflicts

of other countries that brought it frequently to the verge of war with

their governments and sometimes beyond. Hostility bordering on open

warfare was therefore the most frequent condition of English foreign

relations. Especially was this true of the relations with Spain. The

most serious contest with that country was the war which culminated in

the battle of the Armada in 1588. Spain had organized an immense fleet

which was intended to go to the Netherlands and convoy an army to be

taken thence for the invasion of England. While passing through the

English Channel, a storm broke upon them, they were attacked and

harried by the English and later by the Dutch, and the whole fleet was

eventually scattered and destroyed. The danger of invasion was greatly

reduced after this time and until the end of Elizabeth's reign in

1603.

*37. Enclosures.*--The century and a half which extends from the middle

years of the fifteenth century to the close of the sixteenth was, as

has been shown, a period remarkable for the extent and variety of its

changes in almost every aspect of society. In the political,

intellectual, and religious world the sixteenth century seemed far

removed from the fifteenth. It is not therefore a matter of surprise

that economic changes were numerous and fundamental, and that social

organization in town and country alike was completely transformed.

During the period last discussed, the fourteenth and the early

fifteenth century, the manorial system had changed very considerably

from its mediæval form. The demesne lands had been quite generally

leased to renting farmers, and a new class of tenants was consequently

becoming numerous; serfdom had fallen into decay; the old manorial

officers, the steward, the bailiff, and the reeve had fallen into

unimportance; the manor courts were not so active, so regular, or so

numerously attended. These changes were gradual and were still

uncompleted at the middle of the fifteenth century; but there was

already showing itself a new series of changes, affecting still other

parts of manorial life, which became steadily more extensive during

the remainder of the fifteenth and through much of the sixteenth

century. These changes are usually grouped under the name

"enclosures."

The enclosure of land previously open was closely connected with the

increase of sheep-raising. The older form of agriculture,

grain-raising, labored under many difficulties. The price of labor was

high, there had been no improvement in the old crude methods of

culture, nor, in the open fields and under the customary rules, was

there opportunity to introduce any. On the other hand, the inducements

to sheep-raising were numerous. There was a steady demand at good

prices for wool, both for export, as of old, and for the manufactures

within England, which were now increasing. Sheep-raising required

fewer hands and therefore high wages were less an obstacle, and it

gave opportunity for the investment of capital and for comparative

freedom from the restrictions of local custom. Therefore, instead of

raising sheep simply as a part of ordinary farming, lords of manors,

freeholders, farming tenants, and even customary tenants began here

and there to raise sheep for wool as their principal or sole

production. Instances are mentioned of five thousand, ten thousand,

twenty thousand, and even twenty-four thousand sheep in the possession

of a single person. This custom spread more and more widely, and so

attracted the attention of observers as to be frequently mentioned in

the laws and literature of the time.

[Illustration: Partially enclosed Fields of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, 1767.

(Facsimile map, published by the University of Oxford.)]

But sheep could not be raised to any considerable extent on land

divided according to the old open field system. In a vill whose fields

all lay open, sheep must either be fed with those of other men on

the common pasture, or must be kept in small groups by shepherds

within the confines of the various acres or other small strips of the

sheep-raiser's holding. No large number could of course be kept in

this way, so the first thing to be done by the sheep-raiser was to get

enough strips together in one place to make it worth while to put a

hedge or other fence around them, or else to separate off in the same

way a part or the whole of the open pastures or meadows. This was the

process known as enclosing. Separate enclosed fields, which had

existed only occasionally in mediæval farming, became numerous in this

time, as they have become practically universal in modern farming in

English-speaking countries.

But it was ordinarily impracticable to obtain groups of adjacent acres

or sufficiently extensive rights on the common pasture for enclosing

without getting rid of some of the other tenants. In this way

enclosing led to evictions. Either the lord of the manor or some one

or more of the tenants enclosed the lands which they had formerly held

and also those which were formerly occupied by some other holders, who

were evicted from their land for this purpose.

Some of the tenants must have been protected in their holdings by the

law. As early as 1468 Chief Justice Bryan had declared that "tenant by

the custom is as well inheritor to have his land according to the

custom as he which hath a freehold at the common law." Again, in 1484,

another chief justice declared that a tenant by custom who continued

to pay his service could not be ejected by the lord of the manor. Such

tenants came to be known as copyholders, because the proof of their

customary tenure was found in the manor court rolls, from which a copy

was taken to serve as a title. Subsequently copyhold became one of

the most generally recognized forms of land tenure in England, and

gave practically as secure title as did a freehold. At this time,

however, notwithstanding the statements just given, the law was

probably not very definite or not very well understood, and customary

tenants may have had but little practical protection of the law

against eviction. Moreover, the great body of the small tenants were

probably no longer genuine customary tenants. The great proportion of

small farms had probably not been inherited by a long line of tenants,

but had repeatedly gone back into the hands of the lords of the manors

and been subsequently rented out again, with or without a lease, to

farmers or rent-paying tenants. These were in most cases probably the

tenants who were now evicted to make room for the new enclosed sheep

farms.

By these enclosures and evictions in some cases the open lands of

whole vills were enclosed, the old agriculture came to an end, and as

the enclosers were often non-residents, the whole farming population

disappeared from the village. Since sheep-raising required such a

small number of laborers, the farm laborers also had to leave to seek

work elsewhere, and the whole village, therefore, was deserted, the

houses fell into ruin, and the township lost its population entirely.

This was commonly spoken of at the time as "the decaying of towns,"

and those who were responsible for it were denounced as enemies of

their country. In most cases, however, the enclosures and depopulation

were only partial. A number of causes combined to carry this movement

forward. England was not yet a wealthy country, but such capital as

existed, especially in the towns, was utilized and made remunerative

by investment in the newly enclosed farms and in carrying on the

expenses of enclosure. The dissolution of the monasteries between 1536

and 1542 brought the lands which they had formerly held into the

possession of a class of men who were anxious to make them as

remunerative as possible, and who had no feeling against enclosures.

Nevertheless, the changes were much disapproved. Sir Thomas More

condemns them in the _Utopia_, as do many other writers of the same

period and of the reign of Elizabeth. The landlords, the enclosers,

the city merchants who took up country lands, were preached against

and inveighed against by such preachers as Latimer, Lever, and Becon,

and in a dozen or more pamphlets still extant. The government also put

itself into opposition to the changes which were in progress. It was

believed that there was danger of a reduction of the population and

thus of a lack of soldiers; it was feared that not enough grain would

be raised to provide food for the people; the dangerous masses of

wandering beggars were partly at least recruited from the evicted

tenants; there was a great deal of discontent in the country due to

the high rents, lack of occupation, and general dislike of change. A

series of laws were therefore carried through Parliament and other

measures taken, the object of which was to put a stop to the increase

of sheep-farming and its results. In 1488 a statute was enacted

prohibiting the turning of tillage land into pasture. In 1514 a new

law was passed reënacting this and requiring the repair by their

owners of any houses which had fallen into decay because of the

substitution of pasture for tillage, and their reoccupation with

tenants. In 1517 a commission of investigation into enclosures was

appointed by the government. In 1518 the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal

Wolsey, issued a proclamation requiring all those who had enclosed

lands since 1509 to throw them open again, or else give proof that

their enclosure was for the public advantage. In 1534 the earlier

laws were reënacted and a further provision made that no person

holding rented lands should keep more than twenty-four hundred sheep.

In 1548 a new commission on enclosures was appointed which made

extensive investigations, instituted prosecutions, and recommended new

legislation. A law for more careful enforcement was passed in 1552,

and the old laws were reënacted in 1554 and 1562. This last law was

repealed in 1593, but in 1598 others were enacted and later extended.

In 1624, however, all the laws on the subject were repealed. As a

matter of fact, the laws seem to have been generally ineffective. The

nobility and gentry were in the main in favor of the enclosures, as

they increased their rents even when they were not themselves the

enclosers; and it was through these classes that legislation had to be

enforced at this time if it was to be effective.

[Illustration: Sixteenth Century Manor House and Village, Maddingley,

Cambridgeshire. Nichols: _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.]

Besides the official opposition of the government, there were

occasional instances of rioting or violent destruction of hedges and

other enclosures by the people who felt themselves aggrieved by them.

Three times these riots rose to the height of an insurrection. In 1536

the so-called "Pilgrimage of Grace" was a rising of the people partly

in opposition to the introduction of the Reformation, partly in

opposition to enclosures. In 1549 a series of risings occurred, the

most serious of which was the "camp" under Kett in Norfolk, and in

1552 again there was an insurrection in Buckinghamshire. These risings

were harshly repressed by the government. The rural changes,

therefore, progressed steadily, notwithstanding the opposition of the

law, of certain forms of public opinion, and of the violence of mobs.

Probably enclosures more or less complete were made during this period

in as many as half the manors of England. They were at their height in

the early years of the sixteenth century, during its latter half

they were not so numerous, and by its close the enclosing movement had

about run its course, at least for the time.

*38. Internal Divisions in the Craft Gilds.*--Changes in town life

occurred during this period corresponding quite closely to the

enclosures and their results in the country. These consisted in the

decay of the gilds, the dispersion of certain town industries through

the rural districts, and the loss of prosperity of many of the old

towns. In the earlier craft gilds each man had normally been

successively an apprentice, a journeyman, and a full master craftsman,

with a little establishment of his own and full participation in the

administration of the fraternity. There was coming now to be a class

of artisans who remained permanently employed and never attained to

the position of master craftsmen. This was sometimes the result of a

deliberate process of exclusion on the part of those who were already

masters. In 1480, for instance, a new set of ordinances given to the

Mercers' Gild of Shrewsbury declares that the fines assessed on

apprentices at their entry to be masters had been excessive and should

be reduced. Similarly, the Oxford Town Council in 1531 restricts the

payment required from any person who should come to be a full brother

of any craft in that town to twenty shillings, a sum which would equal

perhaps fifty dollars in modern value. In the same year Parliament

forbade the collection of more than two shillings and sixpence from

any apprentice at the time of his apprenticeship, and of more than

three shillings and fourpence when he enters the trade fully at the

expiration of his time. This indicates that the fines previously

charged must have been almost prohibitive. In some trades the masters

required apprentices at the time of indenture to take an oath that

they would not set up independent establishments when they had

fulfilled the years of their apprenticeship, a custom which was

forbidden by Parliament in 1536. In other cases it was no doubt the

lack of sufficient capital and enterprise which kept a large number of

artisans from ever rising above the class of journeymen.

Under these circumstances the journeymen evidently ceased to feel that

they enjoyed any benefits from the organized crafts, for they began to

form among themselves what are generally described as "yeomen gilds"

or "journeymen gilds." At first the masters opposed such bodies and

the city officials supported the old companies by prohibiting the

journeymen from holding assemblies, wearing a special livery, or

otherwise acting as separate bodies. Ultimately, however, they seem to

have made good their position, and existed in a number of different

crafts in more or less subordination to the organizations of the

masters. The first mention of such bodies is soon after the Peasants'

Rebellion, but in most cases the earliest rise of a journeyman gild in

any industry was in the latter part of the fifteenth or in the

sixteenth century. They were organizations quite similar to the older

bodies from which they were a split, except that they had of course no

general control over the industry. They had, however, meetings,

officers, feasts, and charitable funds. In addition to these functions

there is reason to believe that they made use of their organization to

influence the rate of wages and to coerce other journeymen. Their

relations to the masters' companies were frequently defined by regular

written agreements between the two parties. Journeymen gilds existed

among the saddlers, cordwainers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters,

drapers, ironmongers, founders, fishmongers, cloth-workers, and

armorers in London, among the weavers in Coventry, the tailors in

Exeter and in Bristol, the shoemakers in Oxford, and no doubt in some

other trades in these and other towns.

Among the masters also changes were taking place in the same

direction. Instead of all master artisans or tradesmen in any one

industry holding an equal position and taking an equal part in the

administration of affairs of the craft, there came, at least in some

of the larger companies, to be quite distinct groups usually described

as those "of the livery" and those "not of the livery." The expression

no doubt arose from the former class being the more well-to-do and

active masters who had sufficient means to purchase the suits of

livery worn on state occasions, and who in other ways were the leading

and controlling members of the organization. This came, before the

close of the fifteenth century, in many crafts to be a recognized

distinction of class or station in the company. A statement of the

members in one of the London fraternities made in 1493 gives a good

instance of this distinction of classes, as well as of the subordinate

body last described. There were said to be at that date in the

Drapers' Company of the craft of drapers in the clothing, including

the masters and four wardens, one hundred and fourteen, of the

brotherhood out of the clothing one hundred and fifteen, of the

bachelors' company sixty. It was from this prominence of the liveried

gildsmen, that the term "Livery Companies" came to be applied to the

greater London gilds. It was the wealthy merchants and the craftsmen

of the livery of the various fraternities who rode in procession to

welcome kings or ambassadors at their entrance into the city, to add

lustre to royal wedding ceremonies, or give dignity to other state

occasions. In 1483 four hundred and six members of livery companies

riding in mulberry colored coats attended the coronation procession of

Richard III. The mayors and sheriffs and aldermen of London were

almost always livery men in one or another of the companies. A

substantial fee had usually to be paid when a member was chosen into

the livery, which again indicates that they were the wealthier

members. Those of the livery controlled the policy of the gild to the

exclusion of the less conspicuous members, even though these were also

independent masters with journeymen and apprentices of their own.

But the practical administration of the affairs of the wealthier

companies came in many cases to be in the hands of a still smaller

group of members. This group was often known as the "Court of

Assistants," and consisted of some twelve, twenty, or more members who

possessed higher rights than the others, and, with the wardens or

other officials, decided disputes, negotiated with the government or

other authorities, disposed of the funds, and in other ways governed

the organized craft or trade. At a general meeting of the members of

the Mercers of London, for instance, on July 23, 1463, the following

resolution was passed: "It is accorded that for the holding of many

courts and congregations of the fellowship, it is odious and grievous

to the body of the fellowship and specially for matters of no great

effect, that hereafter yearly shall be chosen and associated to the

wardens for the time being twelve other sufficient persons to be

assistants to the said wardens, and all matters by them finished to be

holden firm and stable, and the fellowship to abide by them." Sixteen

years later these assistants with the wardens were given the right to

elect their successors.

Thus before the close of the sixteenth century the craft and trading

organizations had gone through a very considerable internal change. In

the fourteenth century they had been bodies of masters of

approximately equal position, in which the journeymen participated in

some of the elements of membership, and would for the most part in due

time become masters and full members. Now the journeymen had become

for the most part a separate class, without prospect of mastership.

Among the masters themselves a distinct division between the more and

the less wealthy had taken place, and an aristocratic form of

government had grown up which put the practical control of each of the

companies in the hands of a comparatively small, self-perpetuating

ruling body. These developments were all more marked, possibly some of

them were only true, in the case of the London companies. London,

also, so far as known, is the only English town in which the companies

were divided into two classes, the twelve "Greater Companies," and the

fifty or more "Lesser Companies"; the former having practical control

of the government of the city, the latter having no such influence.

*39. Change of Location of Industries.*--The changes described above

were, as has been said, the result of development from within the

craft and trading organizations themselves, resulting probably in the

main from increasing wealth. There were other contemporary changes in

these companies which were rather the result of external influences.

One of these external factors was the old difficulty which arose from

artisans and traders who were not members of the organized companies.

There had always been men who had carried on work surreptitiously

outside of the limits of the authorized organizations of their

respective industries. They had done this from inability or

unwillingness to conform to the requirements of gild membership, or

from a desire to obtain more employment by underbidding in price, or

additional profit by using unapproved materials or methods. Most of

the bodies of ordinances mention such workmen and traders, men who

have not gone through a regular apprenticeship, "foreigners" who have

come in from some other locality and are not freemen of the city where

they wish to work, irresponsible men who will not conform to the

established rules of the trade. This class of persons was becoming

more numerous through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,

notwithstanding the efforts of the gilds, supported by municipal and

national authority. The prohibition of any workers setting up business

in a town unless they had previously obtained the approval of the

officials of their trade was more and more vigorous in the later

ordinances; the fines imposed upon masters who engaged journeymen who

had not paid the dues, newcomers into the town, were higher. The

complaints of the intrusion of outsiders were more loud and frequent.

There was evidently more unsupervised, unregulated labor.

But the increase in the number of these unorganized laborers, these

craftsmen and traders not under the control of the gilds, was most

marked in the rural districts, that is to say, in market towns and in

villages entirely outside of the old manufacturing and trading

centres. Even in the fourteenth century there were a number of

weavers, and probably of other craftsmen, who worked in the villages

in the vicinity of the larger towns, such as London, Norwich, and

York, and took their products to be sold on fair or market days in

these towns. But toward the end of the fifteenth century this rural

labor received a new kind of encouragement and a corresponding

extension far beyond anything before existing. The English

cloth-making industry at this period was increasing rapidly. Whereas

during the earlier periods, as we have seen, wool was the greatest of

English exports, now it was coming to be manufactured within the

country. In connection with this manufacture a new kind of industrial

organization began to show itself which, when it was completed,

became known as the "domestic system." A class of merchants or

manufacturers arose who are spoken of as "clothiers," or "merchant

clothiers," who bought the wool or other raw material, and gave it out

to carders or combers, spinners, weavers, fullers, and other

craftsmen, paying them for their respective parts in the process of

manufacture, and themselves disposing of the product at home or for

export. The clothiers were in this way a new class of employers,

putting the master weavers or other craftsmen to work for wages. The

latter still had their journeymen and apprentices, but the initiative

in their industry was taken by the merchants, who provided the raw

material and much of the money capital, and took charge of the sale of

the completed goods. The craftsmen who were employed in this form of

industry did not usually dwell in the old populous and wealthy towns.

It is probable that the restrictions of the gild ordinances were

disadvantageous both to the clothiers and to the small master

craftsmen, and that the latter, as well as journeymen who had no

chance to obtain an independent position, now that the town craft

organizations were under the control of the more wealthy members, were

very ready to migrate to rural villages. Thus, in as far as the

weaving industry was growing up under the management of the employing

clothiers, it was slipping out from under the control of the town

gilds by its location in the country. The same thing occurred in other

cases, even without the intermediation of a new employing class. We

hear of mattress makers, of rope makers, of tile makers, and other

artisans establishing themselves in the country villages outside of

the towns, where, as a law of 1495 says, "the wardens have no power or

authority to make search." In certain parts of England, in the

southwest, the west, and the northwest, independent weavers now set up

for themselves in rural districts as those of the eastern counties

had long done, buying their own raw materials, bringing their

manufactures to completion, and then taking them to the neighboring

towns and markets to sell, or hawking them through the rural

districts.

These changes, along with others occurring simultaneously, led to a

considerable diminution of the prosperity of many of the large towns.

They were not able to pay their usual share of taxation, the

population of some of them declined, whole streets or quarters, when

destroyed by fire or other catastrophe, were left unbuilt and in

ruins. Many of the largest and oldest towns of England are mentioned

in the statutes of the reign of Henry VIII as being more or less

depleted in population. The laws and literature of the time are

ringing with complaints of the "decay of the towns," where the

reference is to cities, as well as where it is to rural villages.

Certain new towns, it is true, were rising into greater importance,

and certain rural districts were becoming populous with this body of

artisans whose living was made partly by their handicraft, partly by

small farming. Nevertheless the old city craft organizations were

permanently weakened and impoverished by thus losing control of such a

large proportion of their various industries. The occupations which

were carried on in the country were pursued without supervision by the

gilds. They retained control only of that part of industry which was

still carried on in the towns.

*40. The Influence of the Government on the Gilds.*--Internal divisions

and external changes in the distribution of industry were therefore

alike tending to weaken the gild organization. It had to suffer also

from the hostility or intrusion of the national government. Much of

the policy of the government tended, it is true, as in the case of the

enclosures, to check the changes in progress, and thus to protect the

gild system. It has been seen that laws were passed to prohibit the

exclusion of apprentices and journeymen from full membership in the

crafts. As early as 1464 a law was passed to regulate the growing

system of employment of craftsmen by clothiers. This was carried

further in a law of 1511, and further still in 1551 and 1555. The

manufacture of rope in the country parts of Dorsetshire was prohibited

and restricted to the town of Bridport in 1529; the cloth manufacture

which was growing up through the "hamlets, thorps, and villages" in

Worcestershire was forbidden in 1553 to be carried on except in the

five old towns of Worcester, Evesham, Droitwich, Kidderminster, and

Bromsgrove; in 1543 it was enacted that coverlets were not to be

manufactured in Yorkshire outside of the city of York, and there was

still further legislation in the same direction. Numerous acts were

also passed for the purpose of restoring the populousness of the

towns. There is, however, little reason to believe that these laws had

much more effect in preventing the narrowing of the control of the

gilds and the scattering of industries from the towns to the country

than the various laws against enclosures had, and the latter object

was practically surrendered by the numerous exceptions to it in laws

passed in 1557, 1558, and 1575. All the laws favoring the older towns

were finally repealed in 1623.

Another class of laws may seem to have favored the craft

organizations. These were the laws regulating the carrying on of

various industries, in some of which the enforcement of the laws was

intrusted to the gild authorities. The statute book during the

sixteenth century is filled with laws "for the true making of pins,"

"for the making of friezes and cottons in Wales," "for the true

currying of leather," "for the making of iron gads," "for setting

prices on wines," for the regulation of the coopers, the tanners, the

makers of woollen cloth, the dyers, the tallow chandlers, the saddlers

and girdlers, and dozens of other occupations. But although in many of

these laws the wardens of the appropriate crafts are given authority

to carry out the requirements of the statute, either of themselves or

along with the town officials or the justices of the peace; yet, after

all, it is the rules established by government that they are to carry

out, not their own rules, and in many of the statutes the craft

authorities are entirely ignored. This is especially true of the

"Statute of Apprentices," passed in the fifth year of the reign of

Queen Elizabeth, 1563. This great industrial code, which remained on

the statute book for two hundred and fifty years, being repealed only

in 1813, was primarily a reënactment of the statutes of laborers,

which had been continued from time to time ever since their

introduction in 1349. It made labor compulsory and imposed on the

justices of the peace the duty of meeting in each locality once a year

to establish wages for each kind of industry. It required a seven

years' apprenticeship for every person who should engage in any trade;

established a working day of twelve hours in summer and during

daylight in winter; and enacted that all engagements, except those for

piece work, should be by the year, with six months' notice of a close

of the contract by either employer or employee. By this statute all

the relations between master and journeyman and the rules of

apprenticeship were regulated by the government instead of by the

individual craft gilds. It is evident that the old trade organizations

were being superseded in much of their work by the national

government. Freedom of action was also restricted by the same power in

other respects also. As early as 1436 a law had been passed,

declaring that the ordinances made by the gilds were in many cases

unreasonable and injurious, requiring them to submit their existing

ordinances to the justices at Westminster, and prohibiting them from

issuing any new ones until they had received the approval of these

officials. There is no indication of the enforcement of this law. In

1504, however, it was reënacted with the modification that approval

might be sought from the justices on circuit. In 1530 the same

requirement was again included in the law already referred to

prohibiting excessive entrance fees. As the independent legislation of

the gilds for their industries was already much restricted by the town

governments, their remaining power to make rules for themselves must

now have been very slight. Their power of jurisdiction was likewise

limited by a law passed in 1504, prohibiting the companies from making

any rule forbidding their members to appeal to the ordinary national

courts in trade disputes.

[Illustration: Residence of Chantry Priests of Altar of St. Nicholas,

near Lincoln Cathedral. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth

Century._)]

But the heaviest blow to the gilds on the part of the government came

in 1547, as a result of the Reformation. Both the organizations formed

for the control of the various industries, the craft gilds, and those

which have been described in Chapter III as non-industrial, social, or

religious gilds, had property in their possession which had been

bequeathed or given to them by members on condition that the gild

would always support or help to support a priest, should see that mass

was celebrated for the soul of the donor and his family, should keep a

light always burning before a certain shrine, or for other religious

objects. These objects were generally looked upon as superstitious by

the reformers who became influential under Edward VI, and in the first

year of his reign a statute was passed which confiscated to the crown,

to be used for educational or other purposes, all the properly of

every kind of the purely religious and social gilds, and that part of

the property of the craft gilds which was employed by them for

religious purposes. One of the oldest forms of voluntary organization

in England therefore came to an end altogether, and one of the

strongest bonds which had held the members of the craft gilds together

as social bodies was removed. After this time the companies had no

religious functions, and were besides deprived of a considerable

proportion of their wealth. This blow fell, moreover, just at a time

when all the economic influences were tending toward their weakening

or actual disintegration.

[Illustration: Monastery turned into a Farmhouse, Dartford Priory,

Kent. Nichols: _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.]

The trade and craft companies of London, like those of other towns,

were called upon at first to pay over to the government annually the

amount which they had before used for religious purposes. Three years

after the confiscation they were required to pay a lump sum

representing the capitalized value of this amount, estimated for the

London companies at £20,000. In order to do so they were of course

forced to sell or mortgage much of their land. That which they

succeeded in retaining, however, or bought subsequently was relieved

of all government charges, and being situated for the most part in the

heart of London, ultimately became extremely valuable and is still in

their possession. So far have the London companies, however, departed

from their original purpose that their members have long ceased to

have any connection with the occupations from which the bodies take

their names.

*41. General Causes and Evidences of the Decay of the Gilds.*--An

analogous narrowing of the interests of the crafts occurred in the

form of a cessation of the mystery plays. Dramatic shows continued to

be brought out yearly by the crafts in many towns well into the

sixteenth century. It is to be noticed, however, that this was no

longer done spontaneously. The town governments insisted that the

pageants should be provided as of old, and on the approach of Corpus

Christi day, or whatever festival was so celebrated in the particular

town, instructions were given for their production, pecuniary help

being sometimes provided to assist the companies in their expense. The

profit which came to the town from the influx of visitors to see the

pageants was a great inducement to the town government to insist on

their continuance. On the other hand, the competition of dramas played

by professional actors tended no doubt to hasten the effect of the

impoverishment and loss of vitality of the gilds. In the last half of

the sixteenth century the mystery plays seem to have come finally to

an end.

Thus the gilds lost the unity of their membership, were weakened by

the growth of industry outside of their sphere of control, superseded

by the government in many of their economic functions, deprived of

their administrative, legislative, and jurisdictional freedom, robbed

of their religious duties and of the property which had enabled them

to fulfil them, and no longer possessed even the bond of their

dramatic interests. So the fraternities which had embodied so much of

the life of the people of the towns during the thirteenth, fourteenth,

and fifteenth centuries now came to include within their organization

fewer and fewer persons and to affect a smaller and smaller part of

their interests. Although the companies continued to exist into later

times, yet long before the close of the period included in this

chapter they had become relatively inconspicuous and insignificant.

One striking evidence of their diminished strength, and apparently a

last effort to keep the gild organization in existence, is the curious

combination or consolidation of the companies under the influence of

the city governments. Numerous instances of the combination of several

trades are to be found in the records of every town, as for instance

the "company of goldsmiths and smiths and others their brethren," at

Hull in 1598, which consisted of goldsmiths, smiths, pewterers,

plumbers and glaziers, painters, cutlers, musicians, stationers and

bookbinders, and basket-makers. A more striking instance is to be

found in Ipswich in 1576, where the various occupations were all drawn

up into four companies, as follows: (1) The Mercers; including the

mariners, shipwrights, bookbinders, printers, fishmongers,

sword-setters, cooks, fletchers, arrowhead-makers, physicians,

hatters, cappers, mercers, merchants, and several others. (2) The

Drapers; including the joiners, carpenters, innholders, freemasons,

bricklayers, tilers, carriers, casket-makers, surgeons, clothiers, and

some others. (3) The Tailors; including the cutlers, smiths, barbers,

chandlers, pewterers, minstrels, peddlers, plumbers, pinners, millers,

millwrights, coopers, shearmen, glaziers, turners, tinkers, tailors,

and others. (4) The Shoemakers; including the curriers, collar-makers,

saddlers, pointers, cobblers, skinners, tanners, butchers, carters,

and laborers. Each of these four companies was to have an alderman and

two wardens, and all outsiders who came to the town and wished to set

up trade were to be placed by the town officials in one or the other

of the four companies. The basis of union in some of these

combinations was evidently the similarity of their occupations, as the

various workers in leather among the "Shoemakers." In other cases

there is no such similarity, and the only foundation that can be

surmised for the particular grouping is the contiguity of the streets

where the greatest number of particular artisans lived, or their

proportionate wealth. Later, this process reached its culmination in

such a case as that of Preston in 1628, where all the tradesmen of the

town were organized as one company or fraternity called "The Wardens

and Company of Drapers, Mercers, Grocers, Salters, Ironmongers, and

Haberdashers." The craft and trading gilds in their mediæval character

had evidently come to an end.

*42. The Growth of Native Commerce.*--The most distinctive

characteristic of English foreign trade down to the middle of the

fifteenth century consisted in the fact that it had been entirely in

the hands of foreigners. The period under discussion saw it

transferred with quite as great completeness to the hands of

Englishmen. Even before 1450 trading vessels had occasionally been

sent out from the English seaport towns on more or less extensive

voyages, carrying out English goods, and bringing back those of other

countries or of other parts of England. These vessels sometimes

belonged to the town governments, sometimes to individual merchants.

This kind of enterprise became more and more common. Individual

merchants grew famous for the number and size of their ships and the

extent of their trade; as for instance, William Canynges of Bristol,

who in 1461 had ten vessels at sea, or Sturmys of the same town, who

at about the same time sent the first English vessel to trade with the

eastern Mediterranean, or John Taverner of Hull, who built in 1449 a

new type of vessel modelled on the carracks of Genoa and the galleys

of Venice. In the middle of the fourteenth century the longest list of

merchants of any substance that could be drawn up contained only 169

names. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were at least

3000 merchants engaged in foreign trade, and in 1601 there were about

3500 trading to the Netherlands alone. These merchants exported the

old articles of English production and to a still greater extent

textile goods, the manufacture of which was growing so rapidly in

England. The export of wool came to an end during the reign of Queen

Elizabeth, but the export of woven cloth was more than enough to take

its place. There was not so much cloth now imported, but a much

greater variety and quantity of food-stuffs and wines, of articles of

fine manufacture, and of the special products of the countries to

which English trade extended.

The entrance of English vessels into ports of towns or countries

whose own vessels had been accustomed to the control of the trade with

England, or where the old commercial towns of the Hanseatic League, of

Flanders, or of Italy had valuable trading concessions, was not

obtained without difficulty, and there was a constant succession of

conflicts more or less violent, and of disputes between English and

foreign sailors and merchants. The progress of English commerce was,

however, facilitated by the decay in the prosperity of many of these

older trading towns. The growth of strong governments in Denmark,

Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Russia resulted in a withdrawal of

privileges which the Hanseatic League had long possessed, and internal

dissensions made the League very much weaker in the later fifteenth

century than it had been during the century and a half before. The

most important single occurrence showing this tendency was the capture

of Novgorod by the Russian Czar and his expulsion of the merchants of

the Hanse from their settlement in that commercial centre. In the same

way most of the towns along the south coast of the Baltic came under

the control of the kingdom of Poland.

A similar change came about in Flanders, where the semi-independent

towns came under the control of the dukes of Burgundy. These

sovereigns had political interests too extensive to be subordinated to

the trade interests of individual towns in their dominions. Thus it

was that Bruges now lost much of its prosperity, while Antwerp became

one of the greatest commercial cities of Europe. Trading rights could

now be obtained from centralized governments, and were not dependent

on the interest or the antagonism of local merchants.

In Italy other influences were leading to much the same results. The

advance of Turkish conquests was gradually increasing the

difficulties of the Eastern trade, and the discovery of the route

around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 finally diverted that branch of

commerce into new lines. English merchants gained access to some of

this new Eastern trade through their connection with Portugal, a

country advantageously situated to inherit the former trade of Italy

and southern Germany. English commerce also profited by the

predominance which Florence obtained over Pisa, Genoa, and other

trading towns. Thus conditions on the Continent were strikingly

favorable to the growing commercial enterprise of England.

*43. The Merchants Adventurers.*--English merchants who exported and

imported goods in their own vessels were, with the exception of the

staplers or exporters of wool and other staple articles, usually

spoken of as "adventurers," "venturers," or "merchants adventurers."

This term is used in three different senses. Sometimes it simply means

merchants who entered upon adventure or risk by sending their goods

outside of the country to new or unrecognized markets, as the

"adventurers to Iceland," "adventurers to Spain." Again, it is applied

to groups of merchants in various towns who were organized for mutual

protection or other advantage, as the "fishmongers adventurers" who

brought their complaints before the Royal Council in 1542, "The

Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of Merchant Venturers, of Bristol,"

existing apparently in the fourteenth century, fully organized by

1467, and incorporated in 1552, "The Society of Merchants Adventurers

of Newcastle upon Tyne," or the similar bodies at York and Exeter.

But by far the most frequent use of the term is that by which it was

applied to those merchants who traded to the Netherlands and adjacent

countries, especially as exporters of cloth, and who came within this

period to be recognized and incorporated as the "Merchants

Adventurers" in a special sense, with headquarters abroad, a coat of

arms of their own, extensive privileges, great wealth, influence, and

prominence. These English merchants, trading to the Netherlands in

other articles than those controlled by the Staplers, apparently

received privileges of trade from the duke of Brabant as early as the

thirteenth century, and the right of settling their own disputes

before their own "consul" in the fourteenth. But their commercial

enterprises must have been quite insignificant, and it was only during

the fifteenth century that they became numerous and their trade in

English cloth extensive. Just at the beginning of this century, in

1407, the king of England gave a general charter to all merchants

trading beyond seas to assemble in definite places and choose for

themselves consuls or governors to arrange for their common trade

advantage. After this time, certainly by the middle of the century,

the regular series of governors of the English merchants in the

Netherlands was established, one of the earliest being William Caxton,

afterward the founder of printing in England. On the basis of these

concessions and of the privileges and charters granted by the home

government the "Merchants Adventurers" gradually became a distinct

organization, with a definite membership which was obtained by payment

of a sum which gradually rose from 6_s._ 8_d._ to £20, until it was

reduced by a law of Parliament in 1497 to £6 13_s._ 4_d._ They had

local branches in England and on the Continent. In 1498 they were

granted a coat of arms by Henry VII, and in 1503 by royal charter a

distinct form of government under a governor and twenty-four

assistants. In 1564 they were incorporated by a royal charter by the

title of "The Merchants Adventurers of England." Long before that time

they had become by far the largest and most influential company of

English exporting merchants. It is said that the Merchants Adventurers

furnished ten out of the sixteen London ships sent to join the fleet

against the Armada.

Most of their members were London mercers, though there were also in

the society members of other London companies, and traders whose homes

were in other English towns than London. The meetings of the company

in London were held for a long while in the Mercers' hall, and their

records were kept in the same minute book as those of the Mercers

until 1526. On the Continent their principal office, hall, or

gathering place, the residence of their Governor and location of the

"Court,", or central government of the company, was at different times

at Antwerp, Bruges, Calais, Hamburg, Stade, Groningen and Middleburg;

for the longest time probably at the first of these places. The larger

part of the foreign trade of England during the fifteenth and most of

the sixteenth century was carried on and extended as well as

controlled and regulated by this great commercial company.

[Illustration: Hall of the Merchants Adventurers at Bruges. (Blade:

_Life of Caxton_. Published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.)]

During the latter half of the sixteenth century, however, other

companies of merchants were formed to trade with various countries,

most of them receiving a government charter and patronage. Of these

the Russia or Muscovy Company obtained recognition from the government

in 1554, and in 1557, when an ambassador from that country came to

London, a hundred and fifty merchants trading to Russia received him

in state. In 1581 the Levant or Turkey Company was formed, and its

members carried their merchandise as far as the Persian Gulf. In 1585

the Barbary or Morocco Company was formed, but seems to have failed.

In 1588, however, a Guinea Company began trading, and in 1600 the

greatest of all, the East India Company, was chartered. The

expeditions sent out by the Bristol merchants and then by the king

under the Cabots, those other voyages so full of romance in search of

a northwest or a northeast passage to the Orient, and the no less

adventurous efforts to gain entrance to the Spanish possessions in the

west, were a part of the same effort of commercial companies or

interests to carry their trading into new lands.

*44. Government Encouragement of Commerce.*--Before the accession of

Henry VII it is almost impossible to discover any deliberate or

continuous policy of the government in commercial matters. From this

time forward, however, through the whole period of the Tudor monarchs

a tolerably consistent plan was followed of favoring English merchants

and placing burdens and restrictions upon foreign traders. The

merchants from the Hanse towns, with their dwellings, warehouses, and

offices at the Steelyard in London, were subjected to a narrower

interpretation of the privileges which they possessed by old and

frequently renewed grants. In 1493 English customs officers began to

intrude upon their property; in 1504 especially heavy penalties were

threatened if they should send any cloth to the Netherlands during the

war between the king and the duke of Burgundy. During the reign of

Henry VIII the position of the Hansards was on the whole easier, but

in 1551 their special privileges were taken away, and they were put in

the same position as all other foreigners. There was a partial regrant

of advantageous conditions in the early part of the reign of

Elizabeth, but finally, in 1578, they lost their privileges forever.

As a matter of fact, German traders now came more and more rarely to

England, and their settlement above London Bridge was practically

deserted.

The fleet from Venice also came less and less frequently. Under Henry

VIII for a period of nine years no fleet came to English ports; then

after an expedition had been sent out from Venice in 1517, and again

in 1521, another nine years passed by. The fleet came again in 1531,

1532, and 1533, and even afterward from time to time occasional

private Venetian vessels came, till a group of them suffered shipwreck

on the southern coast in 1587, after which the Venetian flag

disappeared entirely from those waters.

In the meantime a series of favorable commercial treaties were made in

various directions by Henry VII and his successors. In 1490 he made a

treaty with the king of Denmark by which English merchants obtained

liberty to trade in that country, in Norway, and in Iceland. Within

the same year a similar treaty was made with Florence, by which the

English merchants obtained a monopoly of the sale of wool in the

Florentine dominions, and the right to have an organization of their

own there, which should settle trade disputes among themselves, or

share in the settlement of their disputes with foreigners. In 1496 the

old trading relations with the Netherlands were reëstablished on a

firmer basis than ever by the treaty which has come in later times to

be known as the _Intercursus Magnus_. In the same year commercial

advantages were obtained from France, and in 1499 from Spain. Few

opportunities were missed by the government during this period to try

to secure favorable conditions for the growing English trade. Closely

connected as commercial policy necessarily was with political

questions, the former was always a matter of interest to the

government, and in all the ups and downs of the relations of England

with the Continental countries during the sixteenth century the

foothold gained by English merchants was always preserved or regained

after a temporary loss.

The closely related question of English ship-building was also a

matter of government encouragement. In 1485 a law was passed declaring

that wines of the duchies of Guienne and Gascony should be imported

only in vessels which were English property and manned for the most

part by Englishmen. In 1489 woad, a dyestuff from southern France, was

included, and it was ordered that merchandise to be exported from

England or imported into England should never be shipped in foreign

vessels if sufficient English vessels were in the harbor at the time.

Although this policy was abandoned during the short reign of Edward VI

it was renewed and made permanent under Elizabeth. By indirect means

also, as by the encouragement of fisheries, English seafaring was

increased.

As a result of these various forms of commercial influence, the

enterprise of individual English merchants, the formation of trading

companies, the assistance given by the government through commercial

treaties and favoring statutes, English commerce became vastly greater

than it had ever been before, reaching to Scandinavia and Russia, to

Germany and the Netherlands, to France and Spain, to Italy and the

eastern Mediterranean, and even occasionally to America. Moreover, it

had come almost entirely into the hands of Englishmen; and the goods

exported and imported were carried for the most part in ships of

English build and ownership, manned by English sailors.

*45. The Currency.*--The changes just described were closely connected

with contemporary changes in the gold and silver currency. Shillings

were coined for the first time in the reign of Henry VII, a pound

weight of standard silver being coined into 37 shillings and 6 pence.

In 1527 Henry VIII had the same amount of metal coined into 40

shillings, and later in the year, into 45 shillings. In 1543 coin

silver was changed from the old standard of 11 ounces 2 pennyweights

of pure silver to 18 pennyweights of alloy, so as to consist of 10

ounces of silver to 2 ounces of alloy; and this was coined into 48

shillings. In 1545 the coin metal was made one-half silver, one-half

alloy; in 1546, one-third silver, two-thirds alloy; and in 1550,

one-fourth silver, three-fourths alloy. The gold coinage was

correspondingly though not so excessively debased. The lowest point of

debasement for both silver and gold was reached in 1551. In 1560 Queen

Elizabeth began the work of restoring the currency to something like

its old standard. The debased money was brought to the mints, where

the government paid the value of the pure silver in it. Money of a

high standard and permanently established weight was then issued in

its place. Much of the confusion and distress prevalent during the

reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI was doubtless due to this selfish

and unwise monetary policy.

At about the same time a new influence on the national currency came

into existence. Strenuous but not very successful efforts had long

been made to draw bullion into England and prevent English money from

being taken out. Now some of the silver and gold which was being

extorted from the natives and extracted from the mines of Mexico and

Peru by the Spaniards began to make its way into England, as into

other countries of Europe. These American sources of supply became

productive by about 1525, but very little of this came into general

European circulation or reached England till the middle of the

century. After about 1560, however, through trade, and sometimes by

even more direct routes, the amount of gold and silver money in

circulation in England increased enormously. No reliable statistics

exist, but there can be little doubt that the amount of money in

England, as in Europe at large, was doubled, trebled, quadrupled, or

perhaps increased still more largely within the next one hundred

years.

This increase of money produced many effects. One of the most

important was its effect on prices. These had begun to rise in the

early part of the century, principally as a result of the debasement

of the coinage. In the latter part of the century the rise was much

greater, due now, no doubt, to the influx of new money. Most

commodities cost quite four times as much at the end of the sixteenth

century as they did at its beginning.

Another effect of the increased amount of currency appeared in the

greater ease with which the use of money capital was obtained. Saving

up and borrowing were both more practicable. More capital was now in

existence and more persons could obtain the use of it. As a result,

manufacturing, trade, and even agriculture could now be conducted on a

more extensive scale, changes could be introduced, and production was

apt to be profitable, as prices were increasing and returns would be

greater even than those calculated upon.

*46. Interest.*--Any extensive and varied use of capital is closely

connected with the payment of interest. In accord with a strict

interpretation of certain passages in both the Old and the New

Testament, the Middle Ages regarded the payment of interest for the

use of money as wicked. Interest was the same as usury and was

illegal. As a matter of fact, most regular occupations in the Middle

Ages required very little capital, and this was usually owned by the

agriculturists, handicraftsmen, or merchants themselves; so that

borrowing was only necessary for personal expenses or in occasional

exigencies. With the enclosures, sheep farming, consolidation of

farms, and other changes in agriculture, with the beginning of

manufacturing under the control of capitalist manufacturers, with the

more extensive foreign trading and ship owning, and above all with the

increase in the actual amount of money in existence, these

circumstances were changed. It seemed natural that money which one

person had in his possession, but for which he had no immediate use,

should be loaned to another who could use it for his own enterprises.

These enterprises might be useful to the community, advantageous to

himself, and yet profitable enough to allow him to pay interest for

the use of the money to the capitalist who loaned it to him. As a

matter of fact much money was loaned and, legally or illegally,

interest or usury was paid for it. Moreover, a change had been going

on in legal opinion parallel to these economic changes, and in 1545 a

law was passed practically legalizing interest if it was not at a

higher rate than ten per cent. This was, however, strongly opposed by

the religious opinion of the time, especially among men of Puritan

tendencies. They seemed, indeed, to be partially justified by the fact

that the control of capital was used by the rich men of the time in

such a way as to cause great hardship. In 1552, therefore, the law of

1545 was repealed, and interest, except in the few forms in which it

had always been allowed, was again prohibited. But the tide soon

turned, and in 1571 interest up to ten per cent was again made lawful.

From that time forward the term usury was restricted to excessive

interest, and this alone was prohibited. Yet the practice of receiving

interest for the loan of money was still generally condemned by

writers on morals till quite the end of this period; though lawyers,

merchants, and popular opinion no longer disapproved of it if the rate

was moderate.

*47. Paternal Government.*--In many of the changes which have been

described in this chapter, the share which government took was one of

the most important influences. In some cases, as in the laws against

enclosures, against the migration of industry from the towns to the

rural districts, and against usury, the policy of King and Parliament

was not successful in resisting the strong economic forces which were

at work. In others, however, as in the oversight of industry, in the

confiscation of the property of the gilds devoted to religious uses,

in the settlement of the relations between employers and employees, in

the control of foreign commerce, the policy of the government really

decided what direction changes should take.

As has been seen in this chapter, after the accession of Henry VII

there was a constant extension of the sphere of government till it

came to pass laws upon and provide for and regulate almost all the

economic interests of the nation. This was a result, in the first

place, of the breaking down of those social institutions which had

been most permanent and stable in earlier periods. The manor system in

the country, landlord farming, the manor courts, labor dues, serfdom,

were passing rapidly away; the old type of gilds, city regulations,

trading at fairs, were no longer so general; it was no longer

foreigners who brought foreign goods to England to be sold, or bought

English goods for exportation. When these old Customs were changing or

passing away, the national government naturally took charge to prevent

the threatened confusion of the process of disintegration. Secondly,

the government itself, from the latter part of the fifteenth century

onward, became abler and more vigorous, as has been pointed out in the

first paragraph of this chapter. The Privy Council of the king

exercised larger functions, and extended its jurisdiction into new

fields. Under these circumstances, when the functions of the central

government were being so widely extended, it was altogether natural

that they should come to include the control of all forms of

industrial life, including agriculture, manufacturing, commerce,

internal trade, labor, and other social and economic relations.

Thirdly, the control of economic and social matters by the government

was in accordance with contemporary opinions and feelings. An

enlightened absolutism seems to have commended itself to the most

thoughtful men of that time. A paternalism which regulated a very wide

circle of interests was unhesitatingly accepted and approved. As a

result of the decay of mediæval conditions, the strengthening of

national government, and the prevailing view of the proper functions

of government, almost all economic conditions were regulated by the

government to a degree quite unknown before. In the early part of the

period this regulation was more minute, more intrusive, more evidently

directed to the immediate advantage of government; but by the close of

Elizabeth's reign a systematic regulation was established, which,

while not controlling every detail of industrial life, yet laid down

the general lines along which most of industrial life must run. Some

parts of this regulation have already been analyzed. Perhaps the best

instance and one of the most important parts of it is the Statute of

Apprentices of 1563, already described in paragraph 40. In the same

year, 1563, a statute was passed full of minute regulations for the

fishing and fish-dealing trades. Foreign commerce was carried on by

regulated companies; that is, companies having charters from the

government, giving them a monopoly of the trade with certain

countries, and laying down at least a part of the rules under which

that trade should be carried on. The importation of most kinds of

finished goods and the exportation of raw materials were prohibited.

New industries were encouraged by patents or other government

concessions. Many laws were passed, of which that of 1571, to

encourage the industry of making caps, is a type. This law laid down

the requirement that every person of six years old and upward should

wear on every Sunday and holy day a woollen cap made in England.

The conformity to standard of manufactures was enforced either by the

officers of companies which were established under the authority of

the government or by government officials or patentees, and many of

the methods and standards of manufacture were themselves defined by

statutes or proclamation. In agriculture, while the policy was less

consistent, government regulation was widely applied. There were laws,

as has been noted, forbidding the possession of more than two thousand

sheep by any one landholder and of more than two farms by any one

tenant; laws requiring the keeping of one cow and one calf for every

sixty sheep, and the raising a quarter of an acre of flax or hemp for

every sixty acres devoted to other crops. The most characteristic laws

for the regulation of agriculture, however, were those controlling the

export of grain. In order to prevent an excessive price, grain-raisers

were not allowed to export wheat or other grain when it was scarce in

England. When it was cheap and plenty, they were permitted to do so,

the conditions under which it was to be allowed or forbidden being

decided, according to a law of 1571, by the justices of the peace of

each locality, with the restriction that none should be exported when

the prevailing price was more than 1_s._ 3_d._ a bushel, a limit which

was raised to 2_s._ 6_d._ in 1592.

Thus, instead of industrial life being controlled and regulated by

town governments, merchant and craft gilds, lords of fairs, village

communities, lords of manors and their stewards, or other local

bodies, it was now regulated in its main features by the all-powerful

national government.

*48. BIBLIOGRAPHY*

Professor Ashley's second volume is of especial value for this period.

Green, Mrs. J. R.: _Town Life in England in the Fifteenth Century_,

two volumes.

Cheyney, E. P.: _Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century,

Part I, Rural Changes_.

A discussion of the legal character of villain tenure in the sixteenth

century will be found in articles by Mr. I. S. Leadam, in _The English

Historical Review_, for October, 1893, and in the _Transactions of the

English Royal Historical Society_ for 1892, 1893, and 1894; and by

Professor Ashley in the _English Historical Review_ for April, 1893,

and _Annals of the American Academy of Political Science_ for January,

1891. (Reprinted in _English Economic History_, Vol. II, Chap. 4.)

Bourne, H. R. F.: _English Merchants_.

Froude, J. A.: _History of England_. Many scattered passages of great

interest refer to the economic and social changes of this period, but

they are frequently exaggerated, and in some cases incorrect. Almost

the same remark applies to Professor Rogers' _Six Centuries of Work

and Wages_ and _Industrial and Commercial History of England_.

Busch, Wilhelm: _A History of England under the Tudors_. For the

economic policy of Henry VII.

CHAPTER VII

THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND

Economic Changes Of The Seventeenth And Early Eighteenth Centuries

*49. National Affairs from 1603 to 1760.*--The last three rulers of the

Tudor family had died childless. James, king of Scotland, their

cousin, therefore inherited the throne and became the first English

king of the Stuart family. James reigned from 1603 to 1625. Many of

the political and religious problems which had been created by the

policy of the Tudor sovereigns had now to come up for solution.

Parliament had long been restive under the almost autocratic

government of Queen Elizabeth, but the danger of foreign invasion and

internal rebellion, long-established habit, Elizabeth's personal

popularity, her age, her sex, and her occasional yielding, all

combined to prevent any very outspoken opposition. Under King James

all these things were changed. Yet he had even higher ideas of his

personal rights, powers, and duties as king than any of his

predecessors. Therefore during the whole of the reign dispute and ill

feeling existed between the king, his ministers, and many of the

judges and other officials, on the one hand, and the majority of the

House of Commons and among the middle and upper classes of the

country, on the other. James would willingly have avoided calling

Parliament altogether and would have carried on the government

according to his own judgment and that of the ministers he selected,

but it was absolutely necessary to assemble it for the passing of

certain laws, and above all for the authorization of taxes to obtain

the means to carry on the government. The fall in the value of gold

and silver and the consequent rise of prices, and other economic

changes, had reduced the income of the government just at a time when

its necessary expenses were increasing, and when a spendthrift king

was making profuse additional outlays. Finances were therefore a

constant difficulty during his reign, as in fact they remained during

the whole of the seventeenth century.

In religion James wished to maintain the middle course of the

established church as it had been under Elizabeth. He was even less

inclined to harsh treatment of the Roman Catholics. On the other hand,

the tide of Puritan feeling appealing for greater strictness and

earnestness in the church and a more democratic form of church

government was rising higher and higher, and with this a desire to

expel the Roman Catholics altogether. The House of Commons represented

this strong Protestant feeling, so that still another cause of

conflict existed between King and Parliament. Similarly, in foreign

affairs and on many other questions James was at cross purposes with

the main body of the English nation.

This reign was the period of foundation of England's great colonial

empire. The effort to establish settlements on the North American

coast were at last successful in Virginia and New England, and soon

after in the West Indies. Still other districts were being settled by

other European nations, ultimately to be absorbed by England. On the

other side of the world the East India Company began its progress

toward the subjugation of India. Nearer home, a new policy was carried

out in Ireland, by which large numbers of English and Scotch

immigrants were induced to settle in Ulster, the northernmost

province. Thus that process was begun by which men of English race and

language, living under English institutions and customs, have

established centres of population, wealth, and influence in so many

parts of the world.

Charles I came to the throne in 1625. Most of the characteristics of

the period of James continued until the quarrels between King and

Parliament became so bitter that in 1642 civil war broke out. The

result of four years of fighting was the defeat and capture of the

king. After fruitless attempts at a satisfactory settlement Charles

was brought to trial by Parliament in 1649, declared guilty of

treason, and executed.

A republican form of government was now established, known as the

"Commonwealth," and kingship and the House of Lords were abolished.

The army, however, had come to have a will of its own, and quarrels

between its officers and the majority of Parliament were frequent.

Both Parliament and army had become unpopular, taxation was heavy, and

religious disputes troublesome. The majority in Parliament had carried

the national church so far in the direction of Puritanism that its

excesses had brought about a strong reactionary feeling. Parliament

had already sat for more than ten years, hence called the "Long

Parliament," and had become corrupt and despotic. Under these

circumstances, one modification after another was made in the form of

government until in 1653 Oliver Cromwell, the commander of the army

and long the most influential man in Parliament, dissolved that body

by military force and was made Lord Protector, with powers not very

different from those of a king. There was now a period of good order

and great military and naval success for England; Scotland and

Ireland, both of which had declared against the Commonwealth, were

reduced to obedience, and successful foreign wars were waged. But at

home the government did not succeed in obtaining either popularity or

general acceptance. Parliament after Parliament was called, but could

not agree with the Protector. In 1657 Cromwell was given still higher

powers, but in 1658 he died. His son, Richard Cromwell, was installed

as Protector. The republican government had, however, been gradually

drifting back toward the old royal form and spirit, so when the new

Lord Protector proved to be unequal to the position, when the army

became rebellious again, and the country threatened to fall into

anarchy, Monk, an influential general, brought about the reassembling

of the Long Parliament, and this body recalled the son of Charles I to

take his hereditary seat as king.

This event occurred in 1660, and is known as the Restoration. Charles

II reigned for twenty-five years. His reign was in one of its aspects

a time of reaction in manners and morals against the over-strictness

of the former Puritan control. In government, notwithstanding the

independent position of the king, it was the period when some of the

most important modern institutions came into existence. Permanent

political parties were formed then for the first time. It was then

that the custom arose by which the ministers of the government are

expected to resign when there proves to be a majority in Parliament

against them. It was then that a "cabinet," or group of ministers

acting together and responsible for the policy of the king, was first

formed. The old form of the established church came again into power,

and harsh laws were enacted against Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers,

and members of the other sects which had grown up during the earlier

part of the century.

It was to escape these oppressive laws that many emigrated to the

colonies in America and established new settlements. Not only was the

stream of emigration kept up by religious persecutions, but the

prosperity and abundant opportunity for advancement furnished by the

colonies attracted great numbers. The government of the Stuart kings,

as well as that of the Commonwealth, constantly encouraged distant

settlements for the sake of commerce, shipping, the export of English

manufactured goods, and the import of raw materials. The expansion of

the country through its colonial settlements therefore still

continued.

The great literature which reached its climax in the reign of

Elizabeth continued in equal variety and abundance throughout the

reigns of James and Charles. The greater plays of Shakespeare were

written after the accession of James. Milton belonged to the

Commonwealth period, and Bunyan, the famous author of _Pilgrim's

Progress_, was one of those non-conformists in religion who were

imprisoned under Charles II. With this reign, however, quite a new

literary type arose, whose most conspicuous representative was Dryden.

In 1685 James II succeeded his brother. Instead of carrying on the

government in a spirit of concession to national feeling, he adopted

such an unpopular policy that in 1688 he was forced to flee from

England, and his son-in-law and daughter, William and Mary, were

elected to the throne. On their accession Parliament passed and the

king and queen accepted a "Bill of Rights." This declared the

illegality of a number of actions which recent sovereigns had claimed

the right to do, and guaranteed to Englishmen a number of important

individual rights, which have since been included in many other

documents, especially in the constitutions of several of the American

states and the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United

States. The Bill of Rights is often grouped with the Great Charter,

and these two documents, along with several of the Acts of the

Parliaments of Charles I accepted by the king, make the principal

written elements of the English constitution. The form and powers

attained by the English government have been, however, rather the

result of slight changes from time to time, often without intention of

influencing the constitution, than of any deliberate action. Important

examples of this are certain customs of legislation which grew up

under William and Mary. The Mutiny Act, by which the army is kept up,

was only passed for one year at a time. The grant of taxes was also

only made annually. Parliament must therefore be called every year in

order to obtain money to carry on the work of government, and in order

to keep up the military organization.

As a result of the Revolution of 1688, as the deposition of James II.

and the appointment of William and Mary are called, and of the changes

which succeeded it, Parliament gradually became the most powerful part

of government, and the House of Commons the strongest part of

Parliament. The king's ministers came more and more to carry out the

will of Parliament rather than that of the king. Somewhat later the

custom grew up by which one of the ministers by presiding over the

whole Cabinet, nominating its members to the king, representing it in

interviews with the king, and in other ways giving unity to its

action, created the position of prime minister. Thus the modern

Parliamentary organization of the government was practically complete

before the middle of the eighteenth century. William and Mary died

childless, and Anne, Mary's sister, succeeded, and reigned till 1714.

She also left no heir. In the meantime arrangements had been made to

set aside the descendants of James II, who were Roman Catholics, and

to give the succession to a distant line of Protestant descendants of

James I. In this way George I, Elector of Hanover, of the house of

Brunswick, became king, reigned till 1727, and was succeeded by George

II, who reigned till 1760. The sovereigns of England have been of this

family ever since.

The years following the Revolution of 1688 were a time of almost

constant warfare on the Continent, in the colonies, and at sea. In

many of these wars the real interests of England were but slightly

concerned. In others her colonial and native dependencies were so

deeply affected as to make them veritable national wars. Just at the

close of the period, in 1763, the war known in Europe as the Seven

Years' War and in America as the French and Indian War was brought to

an end by the peace of Paris. This peace drew the outlines of the

widespread empire of Great Britain, for it handed over to her Canada,

the last of the French possessions in America, and guaranteed her the

ultimate predominance in India.

*50. The Extension of Agriculture.*--During the seventeenth and the

first half of the eighteenth century there are no such fundamental

changes in social organization to chronicle as during the preceding

century and a half. During the first hundred years of the period the

whole energy of the nation seems to have been thrown into political

and religious contests. Later there was development and increase of

production, but they were in the main an extension or expansion of the

familiar forms, not such a change of form as would cause any

alteration in the position of the mass of the people.

The practice of enclosing open land had almost ceased before the death

of Elizabeth. There was some enclosing under James I, but it seems to

have been quite exceptional. In the main, those common pastures and

open fields which had not been enclosed by the beginning of this

period, probably one-half of all England, remained unenclosed till the

recommencement of the process long afterward. Sheep farming gradually

ceased to be so exclusively practised, and mixed agriculture became

general, though few if any of those fields which had been surrounded

with hedges, and come into the possession of individual farmers, were

thrown open or distributed again into scattered holdings. Much new

land came into cultivation or into use for pasture through the

draining of marshes and fens, and the clearing of forests. This work

had been begun for the extensive swampy tracts in the east of England

in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by private purchasers,

assisted by an act of Parliament passed in 1601, intended to remove

legal difficulties. It proceeded slowly, partly because of the expense

and difficulty of putting up lasting embarkments, and partly because

of the opposition of the fenmen, or dwellers in the marshy districts,

whose livelihood was obtained by catching the fish and water fowl that

the improvements would drive away. With the seventeenth and early

eighteenth centuries, however, largely through the skill of Dutch

engineers and laborers, many thousands of acres of fertile land were

reclaimed and devoted to grazing, and even grain raising. Great

stretches of old forest and waste land covered with rough underbrush

were also reduced to cultivation.

There was much writing on agricultural subjects, and methods of

farming were undoubtedly improved, especially in the eighteenth

century. Turnips, which could be grown during the remainder of the

season after a grain crop had been harvested, and which would provide

fresh food for the cattle during the winter, were introduced from the

Continent and cultivated to some extent, as were clover and some

improved grasses. But these improvements progressed but slowly, and

farming on the whole was carried on along very much the same old lines

till quite the middle of the eighteenth century. The raising of grain

was encouraged by a system of government bounties, as already stated

in another connection. From 1689 onward a bounty was given on all

grain exported, when the prevailing price was less than six shillings

a bushel. The result was that England exported wheat in all but famine

years, that there was a steady encouragement even if without much

result to improve methods of agriculture, and that landlords were able

to increase their rents. In the main, English agriculture and the

organization of the agricultural classes of the population did not

differ very much at the end of this period from that at the beginning

except in the one point of quantity, the amount of produce and the

number of the population being both largely increased.

*51. The Domestic System of Manufactures.*--Much greater skill in

manufacturing was acquired, principally, as in earlier periods,

through the immigration of foreign artisans. In Queen Elizabeth's time

a great number of such men with their families, who had been driven

from the Netherlands by the persecutions of the duke of Alva, came to

England for refuge. In Sandwich in 1561 some twenty families of

Flemings settled and began their manufactures of various kinds of

cloth; in 1565 some thirty Dutch and Walloon families settled in

Norwich as weavers, in Maidstone a body of similar artisans who were

thread-makers settled in 1567; in 1570 a similar group carrying on

various forms of manufacture settled at Colchester; and still others

settled in some five or six other towns. After 1580 a wave of French

Huguenots, principally silk-weavers, fled from their native country

and were allowed to settle in London, Canterbury, and Coventry. The

renewed persecutions of the Huguenots, culminating in the revocation

of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, sent many thousands more into exile,

large numbers of silk and linen weavers and manufacturers of paper,

clocks, glass, and metal goods coming from Normandy and Brittany into

England, and settling not only in London and its suburbs, but in many

other towns of England. These foreigners, unpopular as they often were

among the populace, and supported in their opportunities of carrying

on their industry only by royal authority, really taught new and

higher industries to the native population and eventually were

absorbed into it as a more gifted and trained component.

There were also some inventions of new processes or devices for

manufacture. The "stocking frame," or machine knitting, was invented

in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but did not get into actual use until

the next century. It then became for the future an extensive industry,

especially in London and Nottingham and their vicinity. The weaving of

cotton goods was introduced and spread especially in the northwest, in

the neighborhood of Manchester and Bolton. A machine for preparing

silk thread was invented in 1719. The printing of imported white

cotton goods, as calicoes and lawns, was begun, but prohibited by

Parliament in the interest of woven goods manufacturers, though the

printing of linens was still allowed. Stoneware was also improved.

These and other new industries introduced by foreigners or developed

by English inventors or enterprising artisans added to the variety and

total amount of English manufacture. The old established industries,

like the old coarser woollen goods and linen manufacture, increased

but slowly in amount and went through no great changes of method.

[Illustration: Hand-loom Weaving. (Hogarth: _The Industrious and the

Lazy Apprentice_.)]

These industries old and new were in some cases regulated and

supervised as to the quality of ware and methods of manufacture, by

the remaining gilds or companies, with the authority which they

possessed from the national government. Indeed, there were within the

later sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries some new companies

organized or old ones renewed especially for this oversight, and to

guard the monopoly of their members over certain industries in certain

towns. In other cases rules were established for the carrying on of a

certain industry, and a patent or monopoly was then granted by the

king by which the person or company was given the sole right to carry

on a certain industry according to those rules, or to enforce the

rules when it was carried on by other people. In still other

industries a government official had the oversight and control of

quality and method of manufacture. Much production, however,

especially such as went on in the country, was not supervised at all.

[Illustration: Old Cloth-hall at Halifax.]

Far the greater part of manufacturing industry in this period was

organized according to the "domestic system," the beginnings of which

have been already noticed within the previous period. That is to say,

manufacturing was carried on in their own houses by small masters with

a journeyman and apprentice or two. Much of it was done in the country

villages or suburbs of the larger towns, and such handicraft was very

generally connected with a certain amount of cultivation of the soil.

A small master weaver or nail manufacturer, or soap boiler or potter,

would also have a little farm and divide his time between the two

occupations. The implements of manufacture almost always belonged to

the small master himself, though in the stocking manufacture and the

silk manufacture they were often owned by employing capitalists and

rented out to the small manufacturers, or even to journeymen. In some

cases the raw material--wool, linen, metal, or whatever it might

be--was purchased by the small manufacturer, and the goods were either

manufactured for special customers or taken when completed to a

neighboring town on market days, there to be sold to a local dealer,

or to a merchant who would transport it to another part of the country

or export it to other countries. In other cases the raw material,

especially in the case of cotton, was the property of a town merchant

or capitalist, who distributed it to the small domestic manufacturers

in their houses in the villages, paying them for the processes of

production, and himself collecting the completed product and disposing

of it by sale or export. This domestic manufacture was especially

common in the southwest, centre, and northwest of England, and

manufacturing towns like Birmingham, Halifax, Sheffield, Leeds,

Bolton, and Manchester were growing up as centres around which it

gathered. Little or no organization existed among such small

manufacturers, though their apprentices were of course supposed to be

taken and their journeymen hired according to the provisions of the

Statute of Apprentices, and their products were sometimes subjected to

some governmental or other supervision.

Thus in manufacturing and artisan life as in agricultural the period

was marked by an extension and increase of the amount of industry, on

the same general lines as had been reached by 1600, rather than by any

considerable changes.

*52. Commerce under the Navigation Acts.*--The same thing is true of

commerce, although its vast extension was almost in the nature of a

revolution. As far back as the reign of Elizabeth most of the imports

into England were brought in English vessels by English importers, and

the goods which were exported were sent out by English exporters. The

goods which were manufactured in scattered villages or town suburbs by

the domestic manufacturers were gathered by these merchants and sent

abroad in ever increasing amounts. The total value of English exports

in 1600 was about 10 million dollars, at the close of the century it

was some 34 millions, and in 1750 about 63 millions. This trade was

carried on largely by merchants who were members of those chartered

trading companies which have been mentioned as existing already in the

sixteenth century. Some of these were "regulated companies"; that is,

they had certain requirements laid down in their charters and power to

adopt further rules and regulations, to which their members must

conform. Others had similar chartered rights, but all their members

invested funds in a common capital and traded as a joint stock

company. In both kinds of cases each company possessed a monopoly of

some certain field of trade, and was constantly engaged in the

exclusion of interlopers from its trade. Of these companies the

Merchants Adventurers, the oldest and one of the wealthiest,

controlled the export of manufactured cloth to the Netherlands and

northwestern Germany and remained prominent and active into the

eighteenth century. The Levant, the Eastland, the Muscovy, and the

Guinea or Royal African, and, greatest of all, the East India Company,

continued to exist under various forms, and carried on their distant

commerce through the whole of this period. With some of the nearer

parts of Europe--France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy--there was much

trading by private merchants not organized as companies or only

organized among themselves. The "Methuen treaty," negotiated with

Portugal in 1703, gave free entry of English manufactured goods into

that country in return for a decreased import duty on Portuguese wines

brought into England.

[Illustration: Principal English Trade Routes About 1700.]

The foreign lands with which these companies traded furnished at the

beginning of this period the only places to which goods could be

exported and from which goods could be brought; but very soon that

series of settlements of English colonists was begun, one of the

principal inducements for which was that they would furnish an outlet

for English goods. The "Plantation of Ulster," or introduction of

English and Scotch settlers into the north of Ireland between 1610 and

1620, was the beginning of a long process of immigration into that

country. But far the most important plantations as an outlet for trade

as in every respect were those made on the coast of North America and

in the West Indies. The Virginia and the Plymouth Companies played a

part in the early settlement of these colonies, but they were soon

superseded by the crown, single proprietaries, or the settlers

themselves. Virginia, New England, Maryland, the Carolinas, and

ultimately New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia on the mainland; the

islands of Bermudas, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, and ultimately Canada,

came to be populous colonies inhabited by Englishmen and demanding an

ever increasing supply of English manufactured goods. These colonies

were controlled by the English government largely for their commercial

and other forms of economic value. The production of goods needed in

England but not produced there, such as sugar, tobacco, tar, and

lumber, was encouraged, but the manufacture of such goods as could be

exported from England was prohibited. The purchase of slaves in Africa

and their exportation to the West Indies was encouraged, partly

because they were paid for in Africa by English manufactured goods,

partly because their use in the colonies made the supply of sugar and

some other products plentiful and cheap.

Closely connected with commerce and colonies as a means of disposing

of England's manufactured goods and of obtaining those things which

were needed from abroad was commerce for its own sake, for the profits

which it brought to those engaged in it, and for the indirect value to

the nation of having a large mercantile navy.

The most important provision for this end was the passage of the

"Navigation Acts." We have seen that as early as 1485 certain kinds of

goods could be imported only in English vessels. But in 1651 a law was

passed, and in 1660 under a more regular government reënacted in still

more vigorous form, which carried this policy to its fullest extent.

By these laws all importation of goods into England from any ports of

Asia, Africa, or America was forbidden, except in vessels belonging to

English owners, built in England and manned by English seamen; and

there was the same requirement for goods exported from England to

those countries. From European ports goods could be brought to England

only in English vessels or in vessels the property of merchants of the

country in which the port lay; and similarly for export. These acts

were directed especially against the Dutch merchants, who were fast

getting control of the carrying trade. The result of the policy of the

Navigation Acts was to secure to English merchants and to English

shipbuilders a monopoly of all the trade with the East Indies and

Africa and with the American colonies, and to prevent the Dutch from

competing with English merchants for the greater part of the trade

with the Continent of Europe.

The characteristics of English commerce in this period, therefore,

were much the same as in the last. It was, however, still more

completely controlled by English merchants and was vastly extended in

amount. Moreover, this extension bid fair to be permanent, as it was

largely brought about by the growth of populous English colonies in

Ireland and America, and by the acquisition of great spheres of

influence in India.

*53. Finance.*--The most characteristic changes of the period now being

studied were in a field to which attention has been but slightly

called before; that is, in finance. Capital had not existed in any

large amounts in mediæval England, and even in the later centuries

there had not been any considerable class of men whose principal

interest was in the investment of saved-up capital which they had in

their hands. Agriculture, manufacturing, and even commerce were

carried on with very small capital and usually with such capital as

each farmer, artisan, or merchant might have of his own; no use of

credit to obtain money from individual men or from banks for

industrial purposes being ordinarily possible. Questions connected

with money, capital, borrowing, and other points of finance came into

somewhat greater prominence with the sixteenth century, but they now

attained an altogether new and more important notice.

Taxation, which had been looked upon as abnormal and occasional during

earlier times, and only justifiable when some special need for large

expenditure by the government arose, such as war, a royal marriage, or

the entertainment of some foreign visitor, now, after long conflicts

between King and Parliament, which are of still greater constitutional

than financial importance, came to be looked upon as a regular normal

custom. In 1660, at the Restoration, a whole system of excise duties,

taxes on imports and exports, and a hearth tax were established as a

permanency for paying the expenses of government, besides special

taxes of various kinds for special demands.

Borrowing, by merchants and others for ordinary purposes of business,

became much more usual. During most of the seventeenth century the

goldsmiths were the only bankers. On account of the strong vaults of

these merchants, their habitual possession of valuable material and

articles, and perhaps of their reputation for probity, persons who had

money beyond their immediate needs deposited it with the goldsmiths,

receiving from them usually six per cent. The goldsmiths then loaned

it to merchants or to the government, obtaining for it interest at the

rate of eight per cent or more. This system gradually became better

established and the high rates decreased. Payments came to be made by

check, and promissory notes were regularly discounted by the

goldsmiths.

The greatest extension in the use of credit, however, came from the

establishment of the Bank of England. In 1691 the original proposition

for the Bank was made to the government by William Patterson. In 1694

a charter for the Bank was finally carried through Parliament by the

efforts of the ministry. The Bank consisted of a group of subscribers

who agreed to loan to the government £1,200,000, the government to pay

them an annual interest of eight and one-half per cent, or £100,000 in

cash, guaranteed by the product of a certain tax. The subscribers were

at the same time incorporated and authorized to carry on a general

business of receiving deposits and lending out money at interest. The

capital which was to be loaned to the government was subscribed

principally by London merchants, and the Bank began its career in the

old Grocers' Hall. The regular income of £100,000 a year gave it a

nucleus of strength, and enabled it to discount notes even beyond its

actual deposits and to issue its own notes or paper money. Thus money

could be borrowed to serve as capital for all kinds of enterprises,

and there was an inducement also for persons to save money and thus

create capital, since it could always bring them in a return by

lending it to the Bank even if they were not in a position to put it

to use themselves. Along with the normal effect of such financial

inventions in developing all forms of trade and industry, there arose

a remarkable series of projects and schemes of the wildest and most

unstable character, and the early eighteenth century saw many losses

and constant fluctuations in the realm of finance. The most famous

instance of this was the "South Sea Bubble," a speculative scheme by

which a regulated company, the South Sea Company, was chartered in

1719 to carry on the slave-trade to the West Indies and whale-fishing,

and incidentally to loan money to the government. Its shares rose to

many fold their par value and fell to almost nothing again within a

few months, and the government and vast numbers of investors and

speculators were involved in its failure.

The same period saw the creation of the permanent national debt. In

earlier times kings and ministers had constantly borrowed money from

foreign or native lenders, but it was always provided and anticipated

that it would be repaid at a certain period, with the interest. With

the later years of the seventeenth century, however, it became

customary for the government to borrow money without any definite

contract or expectation as to when it should be paid back, only making

an agreement to pay a certain rate of interest upon it. This was

satisfactory to all parties. The government obtained a large sum at

the time, with the necessity of only paying a small sum every year for

interest; investors obtained a remunerative use for their money, and

if they should need the principal, some one else was always ready to

pay its value to them for the sake of receiving the interest. The

largest single element of the national debt in its early period was

the loan of £1,200,000 which served as the basis for the Bank; but

after that time, as for a short time before, sums were borrowed from

time to time which were not repaid, but became a permanent part of the

debt: the total rising to more than £75,000,000 by the middle of the

century. Incidentally, this, like the deposits at the goldsmiths and

the Bank, became an opportunity for the investment of savings and an

inducement to create more capital.

Fire insurance and life insurance both seem to have had their origin

in the later decades of the seventeenth century.

Thus in the realm of finance there was much more of novelty, of

actually new development, during this period than in agriculture,

manufacturing, or commerce. Yet all these forms of economic life and

of the social organization which corresponded to them were alike in

one respect, that they were quite minutely regulated by the national

government. The fabric of paternal government which we saw rising in

the time of the Tudor sovereigns remained almost intact through the

whole of this period. The regulation of the conditions of labor, of

trade, of importation and exportation, of finance, of agriculture, of

manufacture, in more or less detail, was part of the regular work of

legislation or administrative action. Either in order to reach certain

ulterior ends, such as government power, a large navy, or a large body

of money within the country, or simply as a part of what were looked

upon at the time as the natural functions of government, laws were

constantly being passed, charters formulated, treaties entered into,

and other action taken by government, intended to encourage one kind

of industry and discourage another, to determine rates of wages and

hours of labor, prescribe rules for agriculture, or individual trades

or forms of business, to support some kind of industry which was

threatened with decay, to restrict certain actions which were thought

to be disadvantageous, to regulate the whole economic life of the

nation.

It is true that much of this regulation was on the books rather than

in actual existence. It would have required a much more extensive and

efficient civil service, national and local, than England then

possessed to enforce all or any considerable part of the provisions

that were made by act of Parliament or ordered by the King and

Council. Again, new industries were generally declared to be free from

much of the more minute regulation, so that enterprise where it arose

was not so apt to be checked, as conservatism where it already existed

was apt to be perpetuated. Such regulation and control, moreover, were

quite in accord with the feeling and with the economic and political

theories of the time, so there was but little sense of interference

or tyranny felt by the governed. A regulated industrial organization

slowly expanding on well-established lines was as characteristic of

the theory as it was of the practice of the period.

*54. BIBLIOGRAPHY*

Gardiner, S. R.: _The History of England, 1603-1642_, ten volumes.

Many scattered passages in this work and in its continuations, like

those in Froude's history, referred to in the last chapter, apply to

the economic and social history of the period, and they are always

judicious and valuable.

Hewins, W. A. S.: _English Trade and Finance, chiefly in the

Seventeenth Century_.

For this period Cunningham, Rogers, and Palgrave, in the books already

referred to, are almost the only secondary authorities, except such as

go into great detail on individual points. Cunningham's second volume,

which includes this period, is extremely full and satisfactory.

Macpherson, D.: _Annals of Commerce_ is, however, a book of somewhat

broader interest.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PERIOD OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Economic Changes Of The Later Eighteenth And Early Nineteenth

Centuries

*55. National Affairs from 1760 to 1830.*--The seventy years lying

between these two dates were covered by the long reign of George III

and that of his successor George IV. In the political world this

period had by no means the importance that it possessed in the field

of economic development. Parliament had already obtained its permanent

form and powers, and when George III tried to "be a king," as his

mother urged him, the effort to restore personal government was an

utter failure. Between 1775 and 1783 occurred the American Revolution,

by which thirteen of England's most valued colonies were lost to her

and began their progress toward a greater destiny. The breach between

the American colonies and the mother country was brought about largely

by the obstinacy of the king and his ministers in adopting an

arbitrary and unpopular policy. Other political causes no doubt

contributed to the result. Yet the greater part of the alienation of

feeling which underlay the Revolution was due not to political causes,

but to the economic policy already described, by which American

commerce and industry were bent to the interests of England.

In the American war France joined the rebellious colonies against

England, and obtained advantageous terms at the peace. Within ten

years the two countries had again entered upon a war, this time of

vastly greater extent, and continuing almost unbroken for more than

twenty years. This was a result of the outbreak of the French

Revolution. In 1789 the Estates General of France, a body

corresponding in its earlier history to the English Parliament, was

called for the first time for almost two hundred years. This assembly

and its successors undertook to reorganize French government and

society. In the course of this radical process principles were

enunciated proclaiming the absolute liberty and equality of men,

demanding the participation of all in government, the abolition of

aristocratic privileges, and finally of royalty itself. In following

out these ideas, so different from those generally accepted in Europe,

France was brought into conflict with all the other European states,

including Great Britain. War broke out in 1793. Fighting took place on

sea and land and in various parts of the world. France in her new

enthusiasm developed a strength, vigor, and capacity which enabled her

to make head against the alliances of almost all the other countries

of Europe, and even to gain victories and increase her territory at

their expense. No peace seemed practicable. In her successive internal

changes of government one of the generals of the army, Napoleon

Bonaparte, obtained a more and more influential position, until in

1804 he took the title of Emperor. The wars of the French Revolution

therefore were merged in the wars of Napoleon. Alliance after alliance

was made against Napoleon, England commonly taking the initiative in

the formation of them and paying large monthly subsidies to some of

the continental governments to enable them to support their armies.

The English navy won several brilliant victories, especially under

Nelson, although her land forces played a comparatively small part

until the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

The naval supremacy thus obtained made the war a matter of pecuniary

profit to the English nation, notwithstanding its enormous expense;

for it gave to her vessels almost a complete monopoly of the commerce

and the carrying trade of the world, and to her manufactures extended

markets which would otherwise have been closed to her or shared with

other nations. The cutting off of continental and other sources of

supply of grain and the opening of new markets greatly increased the

demand for English grain and enhanced the price paid for it. This

caused higher rents and further enclosure of open land. Thus the war

which had been entered upon reluctantly and with much opposition in

1793, became popular, partly because of the feeling of the English

people that it had become a life and death struggle with France, but

largely also because English industries were flourishing under it. The

wars came to an end with the downfall of Napoleon in 1815, and an

unwonted period of peace for England set in and lasted for almost

forty years.

The French Revolution produced another effect in England. It awakened

a certain amount of admiration for its principles of complete liberty

and equality and a desire to apply them to English aristocratic

society and government. In 1790 societies began to be formed, meetings

held, and pamphlets issued by men who sympathized with the popular

movements in France. Indeed, some of these reformers were suspected of

wishing to introduce a republic in England. After the outbreak of the

war the ministry determined to put down this agitation, and between

1793 and 1795 all public manifestation of sympathy with such

principles was crushed out, although at the cost of considerable

interference with what had been understood to be established personal

rights. Much discontent continued through the whole period of the

war, especially among the lower classes, though it did not take the

form of organized political agitation. It was a period, as will be

seen, of violent economic and social changes, which, although they

enriched England as a whole and made it possible for her to support

the unprecedented expenses of the long war, were very hard upon the

working classes, who were used to the old ways.

After the peace of 1815, however, political agitation began again. The

Whig party seemed inclined to resume the effort to carry certain

moderate reforms which had been postponed on account of the war, and

down below this movement there was a more radical agitation for

universal suffrage and for a more democratic type of government

generally. On the other hand, the Tory government, which had been in

power during almost the whole war period, was determined to oppose

everything in the nature of reform or change, on the ground that the

outrages accompanying the French Revolution arose from just such

efforts to make reforming alterations in the government. The radical

agitation was supported by the discontented masses of the people who

were suffering under heavy taxes, high prices, irregular employment,

and many other evils which they felt to be due to their exclusion from

any share in the government. The years intervening between 1815 and

1830 were therefore a period of constant bitterness and contention

between the higher and the lower classes. Mass meetings which were

called by the popular leaders were dissolved by the government,

radical writers were prosecuted by the government for libel, the

habeas corpus act was suspended repeatedly, and threatened rioting was

met with severe measures. The actions of the ministers, while upheld

by the higher classes, were bitterly attacked by others as being

unconstitutional and tyrannical.

In 1800 the union of the group of British Islands under one government

was completed, at least in form. Scotland had come under the same

crown as England in 1603, and the two Parliaments had been united in

1707, the title Great Britain having been adopted for the combined

nations. The king of England had held the title of Lord of Ireland

from the time of the first conquest, and of King of Ireland since the

adoption of the title by Henry VIII. The union which now took place

consisted in the abolition of the separate Irish Parliament and the

election of Irish members to the combined or "Imperial" Parliament of

the three kingdoms sitting at Westminster. The official title of the

united countries has since been "The United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Ireland."

*56. The Great Mechanical Inventions.*--As the eighteenth century

progressed one form of economic growth seems to have been pressing on

the general economic organization. This was the constant expansion of

commerce, the steadily increasing demand for English manufactured

goods for export.

[Illustration: Distribution of Population According to the Hearth-tax

of 1750. Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.]

The great quantities of goods which were every year sent abroad in

English ships to the colonies, to Ireland, to the Continent, to Asia

and Africa, as well as those used at home, continued to be

manufactured in most cases by methods, with instruments, under an

organization of labor the same as that which had been in existence for

centuries. The cotton and woollen goods which were sold in the West

Indies and America were still carded, spun, and woven in the scattered

cottages of domestic weavers and weaver-farmers in the rural districts

of the west and north of England, by the hand cards, the

spinning-wheel, the cumbrous, old-fashioned loom. The pieces of goods

were slowly gathered from the hamlets to the towns, from the towns

to the seaports, over the poorest of roads, and by the most primitive

of conveyances. And these antiquated methods of manufacture and

transportation were all the more at variance with the needs and

possibilities of the time because there had been, as already pointed

out, a steady accumulation of capital, and much of it was not

remuneratively employed. The time had certainly come for some

improvement in the methods of manufacture.

A closer examination into the process of production in England's

principal industry, cloth-making, shows that this pressure on old

methods was already felt. The raw material for such uses, as it comes

from the back of the sheep, the boll of the cotton plant, or the

crushed stems of the flax, is a tangled mass of fibre. The first

necessary step is to straighten out the threads of this fibre, which

is done in the case of wool by combing, in the others by carding, both

being done at that time by hand implements. The next step is spinning,

that is drawing out the fibres, which have been made parallel by

carding, into a slender cord, and at the same time twisting this

sufficiently to cause the individual fibres to take hold one of

another and thus make a thread of some strength. This was sometimes

done on the old high wheel, which was whirled around by hand and then

allowed to come to rest while another section of the cotton, wool, or

flax was drawn from the carded mass by hand, then whirled again,

twisting this thread and winding it up on the spindle, and so on. Or

it was done by the low wheel, which was kept whirling continuously by

the use of a treadle worked by the foot, while the material was being

drawn out all the time by the two hands, and twisted and wound

continuously by the horseshoe-shaped device known as the "flyer." When

the thread had been spun it was placed upon the loom; strong, firmly

spun material being necessary for the "warp" of upright threads,

softer and less tightly spun material for the "woof" or "weft," which

was wrapped on the shuttle and thrown horizontally by hand between the

two diverging lines of warp threads. After weaving, the fabric was

subjected to a number of processes of finishing, fulling, shearing,

dyeing, if that had not been done earlier, and others, according to

the nature of the cloth or the kind of surface desired.